South Carolina-Iowa NCAA title game rewrites women’s basketball ratings

Sunday’s NCAA tournament national title game between South Carolina and Iowa Hawkeyes averaged 18.7 million viewers, as per preliminary numbers from Nielsen, CNN reported. The numbers peaked at 24 million.

The NCAA women’s college basketball final saw South Carolina take home its third national title and finish the season 38-0. The team was helmed by coach Dawn Staley.

“With a record-setting audience of 18.7 million viewers, Sunday’s Iowa-South Carolina title game was a fitting finale to the most-viewed ever NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament,” CNN quoted ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro as saying.

“These exceptional athletes, coaches and teams captured our attention in unprecedented ways and it’s incumbent on all of us to keep the incredible momentum going,” Pitaro added.

As per ESPN data, the NCAA title game was the second most-watched non-Olympic women’s sporting event ever on US television. The first remains the 2015 Women’s World Cup final between the United States and Japan.

According to ESPN, the NCAA summit clash was also the most watched basketball game – including NBA and WNBA – since 2019.

Prior to the championship game aired on ABC last Sunday, Clark and the Hawkeyes had been featured in the top three most-watched women’s college basketball games of all time: their victory against UConn in the Final Four on Friday (14.2 million viewers), their Elite Eight win against LSU (12.3 million viewers), and the previous year’s national championship game against LSU (9.9 million viewers).

The 2024 Elite Eight and Final Four were broadcasted on ESPN via cable, while the 2023 championship game was aired on ABC, both networks owned by Disney. The 2024 championship game attracted 89% more viewers than the previous year and 285% more than in 2022, when South Carolina defeated Connecticut.

South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, while celebrating her team’s victory, also commended Iowa’s Clark for her significant contribution to the sport of women’s basketball.

“I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport,” Staley said, adding Clark “carried a heavy load.”

“Do I think South Carolina is a part of it? Yeah, we’re a part of it. I don’t know what part, but you can see the numbers that, when Caitlin plays in a game, you see the numbers. They’re real numbers, and a lot of people like to deal in those real numbers,” Staley said.

“I hope we were able to attract some more people by the amount of eyeballs that probably watched our game just because Caitlin was appearing in it,” Staley further added.

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